THE WOELD'S FOREST SUPPLY 
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89,000,000 cubic feet used for distillation. 
30,000,000 „ „ „ cooperage. 
25,000,000 „ „ „ veneers. 
Besides which there were used over 
15,000,000,000 shingles for roofs. 
3,111,157,000 laths. 
3,500,000 telegraph and telephone poles. 
Something like 3,000 square miles of forest are required 
annually to provide the American railways with sleepers. 
These particulars bring out the startling fact that the 
amount used for fuel in the United States — and it has been 
put down as a very conservative estimate — is 64 per cent, 
of the total timber cut, which is estimated at about 
20,000,000,000 cubic feet; this will be gradually much 
reduced as the coal mines of the country become developed. 
The amount of lumber used per head of population in the 
United States is 34 cubic feet, the average for the whole 
of Europe is only 5 cubic feet. 
At a meeting of the Hardwood Timber Association (who 
cut about one-third of the total timber supply of the 
United States) at Memphis, Tenn., in 1906, a conservative 
estimate placed before the meeting stated that there was 
not enough timber standing to continue commercially for 
more than twenty years. 
A recent leaflet of the United States Department of 
Agriculture calls attention to the waning hardwood supply, 
and although the existing supplies of softwoods are being 
rapidly decreased, both the States and Canada possess 
resources of that class of timber on the Pacific slope 
which is only beginning to come into the market ; but these 
regions possess no hardwoods, so there is the unpleasant 
outlook to be faced that when the existing supplies of hard- 
woods are used up there are no others to take their place. 
